For Iran success, clues in Syria deal: Column

Nov. 25, 2013
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Iran's President Hassan Rouhani / Mohammad Berno, AP

by David A. Andelman, USATODAY

by David A. Andelman, USATODAY

The concept of a first step in a comprehensive pact that would remove the prospects of a nuclear-armed Iran is certainly appealing. But the devil is really in the details - and above all in the implementation and the verification. And then there is the inevitable fallout, with the situation, quietly but inexorably, eroding in Syria at the top of the list.

"You don't have to trust the people you are dealing with, you have to have a mechanism put in place, whereby ... you know exactly what they are doing," Secretary of State John Kerry said. "And we believe we are at the beginning of putting that in place with Iran."

Of course, that's precisely where previous such arrangements have come unstuck. It's also where the chemical weapons accord with Syria is proving a potentially serious object lesson. That deal is largely forgotten as a sideshow to the main event of Iran and its potential for creating a nuclear weapon that could hold half the world in its thrall - possibly the best of all possible outcomes for Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Then there is the critical question, all but ignored in the wake of the euphoria in administration circles over what is unquestionably a historic agreement, of whether this makes the West any less likely to confront Iran over its support for the Syrian government's push against Assad's revolutionary foes.

In the end, it may all be a question of timing. As it developed, Obama administration officials had been conducting a series of back-channel but quite high-level discussions with their Iranian counterparts in Oman's capital of Muscat since last March. As these talks seemed quite promising, there's still the open question what role that may have played in President Obama's hesitancy over launching strikes against Syria at the height of the chemical weapons controversy six months later. "I have long suspected that Obama's retreat from Syria was prompted, in part, by his desire to generate Iranian goodwill in the nuclear negotiations. The evidence for that case is growing by the day," says Michael Doran, a senior fellow at the Brookings' Saban Center for Middle East Policy.

In both cases, verification plays a critical role. The mechanism for verification of the provisions of Sunday's nuclear agreement with Iran has been in place since the creation of the International Atomic Energy Agency in 1957. And indeed, in a background briefing just after the Geneva accord was announced, a senior Obama administration official observed, "The IAEA will perform many of these verification steps consistent with their ongoing inspection role in Iran." And just in case anyone missed the fact that the agency has been all but absent in its ability to undertake such verification for years in Iran, the Western countries signing the Geneva accord have added a further layer of bureaucracy to the mechanism, or as this official continued, "in addition, the (six powers) and Iran have committed to establishing a joint commission."

Major monitoring

In Syria, of course, there has been no absence of such monitoring. The group in charge, the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, which incidentally won the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize less than a month after it began its work in Syria, had its inspectors quickly on the ground. And on Oct. 31, a day ahead of the agreed upon deadline, Syria announced, and the inspectors verified, that its production facilities for these weapons had been destroyed. Which leaves the question of what is to be done with the 1,290 tons of such weapons in a host of stockpiles - at least those the inspectors have been able to pinpoint.

Earlier this month, the inspection group set a Dec. 31 deadline to move the dangerous chemicals, particularly sarin and mustard gas components, off Syrian soil. With Norway, Belgium, France as well as Albania all refusing to act as host countries, talk has now turned to transporting them - across often hostile rebel territory - to a Syrian port and loading them onto a boat for destruction in mid-ocean. None of these prospects is especially appealing.

Moreover, the Iranian nuclear accord may serve the useful purpose from the Syrian government perspective of making the West reluctant, at least for the next six months, to challenge the Assad regime in any meaningful manner. The first round of official Syrian peace talks isn't set to start in Geneva until Jan. 22.

Meanwhile, we must content ourselves in both cases with trust, but verify as the only option.

Clearly, for both sides, much is at stake. But the Obama administration cannot let a desperate desire for a potentially historic foreign policy legacy trump the need to police every step of the process, and beyond. Equally, Iran's new regime cannot let this modicum of relief from the chokehold the West has on its economy blind itself to the prospects of an even more catastrophic reversal should it fail to respect the spirit of the Geneva pact.

David A. Andelman is the editor in chief of World Policy Journal and author of A Shattered Peace: Versailles 1919 and the Price We Pay Today.